Saturday, March 14, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
1st Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3)
I was amazed at how far this comet moved. I started my search near Saturn as it was just there a week ago. I couldn't find it. I looked on skyandtelescope.com and found it halfway over to M44. It appeared easily in the 60mm finder-scope and didn't look like much in the 6" LXD. I guided via the 4" retractor on the comet for 21 x 3min subs. Turned out half were behind the tree branches and should be thrown away. I also forgot to rig a dew-shield and may also have some bad stray light. I found the DMK didn't show up on the T42, but did on the T61 under winxp. Stars were bright and round after focusing on the moon, but did find that there was not enough focus depth so I used the 90* televue diagonal. Guiding on the comet via PHD Guiding was easy and the CGE was very up to the task for over 1 hour! Unfortunately I did no align the guider and found the comet was in the corner of the frame and the tail was out of the frame. Since it was cold and dark I didn't try to align
Some things to change next time:
1) guiding and imaging on the same computer
2) alignment of the imaging and guide scopes (finder too, why not?!)
3) dew / light shield on the imaging scope
Some things to change next time:
1) guiding and imaging on the same computer
2) alignment of the imaging and guide scopes (finder too, why not?!)
3) dew / light shield on the imaging scope
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Titan Transit Teaser 20090224
Observation logs
I think there's a name for titles like that, but at 25*F and early in the AM my brain's not so straight.
Bad seeing too.. looked like the whole continental US had bad jetstream. I hope someone west of here got better as it was fairly low on the horizon here.
I forgot about the time delay in stellarium but that was OK as I overslept a bit anyway. Most of the frames are washed out by the trees but you can make out the shadow in the final 3 or so frames. I also caught Dione in a few frames riding the upper left ring, long before it's transit. So no quad transit, but I was able to get something and that still counts! Lucky me, the sky was clear.
Animation from 1018 to 1114UT:
Planet
| Origin: | ObservationManager - SolarSystem Catalog 1.0 |
| Visual impression
|
References
Sessions: 2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00
| Begin: | 2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00 |
| End: | 2009-02-24 um 06:20:00-05:00 |
| Weather: | Poor seeing Great transparency FREEZING 25*F |
| Equipment: | I used: Ubuntu 8.04 Linux and custom coriander CGE mounted 8" Celestron C8i SCT Lymax Cat Cooler DMK 21AF04 2.5x PowerMate Astronomik LRGB filters True Tek Color Filter Wheel with visu diag |
| Comments: | Didn't leave the scope out overnight and it may have impacted some but little of the conditions. I miss timed the Titan Transit becuase of the time delay / light propogation issues with Stellarium. I fixed that now1 |
Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.
>> Observations <<| Longitude: | 35.682° |
| Latitude: | -78.743° |
| Timezone: | UT-300 min |
| Type: | SCT |
| Vendor: | Celestron |
| Aperture: | 203.0 mm |
| Focal length: | 2032.0 mm |
| Vendor: | TeleVue |
| Focal length: | 2.5 mm |
| Typ: | Color |
| Vendor: | The Image Source |
| Pixel: | 640x480 |
Monday, February 23, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Failed Rosette 2009-02-16
CGE with Meade LXD55.
3minute subs x 34
no dew / light shield till past half way of the observing session.
no light pollution filter
no guiding
1st image is a raw stack with no stretch
2nd image is flatted (but why the poor 'gradient'?)
3rd image is NOT flatted, but had some gradient removed in Iris
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Great seeing on Saturn 2009-02-07
Best seeing I've seen since early September! I used the lymax cat cooler extensively, for 30-45 minutes at times. Re-collimated and ran some tests on the moon. Starting imaging long before Saturn hit the meridian and just before I got too tired to stay awake I tried a monster 5min per channel LRGB session. The CGE was up to the task and I had to do very little corrections. This is the result. My best of the season! I managed to catch at least two moons that I'll have to process seperatley and post later.
I was happy to see such steady seeing after an average start. Some things that I payed close attention to while processing: Shadow of rings on globe, shadow of globe on rings on lower right, Cassini division on both sides and growing gap between the rings.
Also, to all you youngin's out there (Hey, I'm a stark 33 stil!), when the seeing's good make sure you spend some time soaking the light of the object into your eyes. It's all to easy to get wrapped up imaging. I smiled big for the views on my screen but even more to see it sitting still in my 4mm and 9mm eyepieces!
Steady Skies,
Mike
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